His book is certainly a more academic one, it had many interesting interviews that he had done with some of the foremost ecologists/climatologists etc.

Although he touches on many of the basic facts, discussed on sites such as this–I think he believes that the powerdown/scaledown approach may be possible?
THE UPSIDE OF DOWN: CATASTROPHE, CREATIVITY AND THE RENEWAL OF CIVILIZATION

This is his new book, I plan on reading it. It’s at least nice to see more maintstream folks tackle this topic–even if they may have a bit more optimistic vision of how things will end up– than many of the peak-oil/primitivist blogs.

All the best.

People are now, thanks to instant information, and the all-too-human antics of the so-called world leaders, people are jsut less loyal to the nation, the state, or the “humanity.”

If people could be one-tenth as “resilient” in the survival of their community as they are for the survival of their nation, we’d not be likely having this conversaiton right now.

The problem is, that Mother CUlture has now gotten to the point where people’s ability function as a member of a ’sustainable’ community is zero. We throlugh training and educaiotn, can only seem to know how to funciton in a sconsumer society. We only know how to consumer, and how to specialize enough to produce for the masses.

Anything in between is a waste of time for capitalists, lacks economies of scale, and provides no enormous wealth divide. ALl of which are good reasons to adopt a communitarian outlook as the only effective and reasonable response to capitalism. UNles you have good reason for CEO murder, the destruction of capital, or armed revolution (which can all have their good reasons, none of which really apply in American society).

We really are free to live without the burdens of the wealth gap if we are only willing to trust each other and work together. It’s not that people are bad and the purity of your intentions must be maintatined, it that we have to recognize the psychological controls implanted in our brain at early ages which phsyio-chemically prevent us from making sound decision in the name of the planet (like, namely, many people’s inability to defecate anywhere but into clean drinking water.

How fucking sick is that?

Sustainability is a different, if somewhat related, question. Sustainability simply asks whether or not a system is destroying its own foundation. While sustainability requires a certain amount of resiliency, it’s also easy to imagine a system that’s fairly resilient, but quite unsustainable: one need only imagine what our own society might look like, if it were capable of building in the kinds of resiliency that Homer-Dixon is calling for.

Fortunately for all involved, I don’t think that kind of resiliency is possible, due to the system’s need for constant growth. Redundancy is essentially room to grow, so it cannot be afforded by anyone.

After years of arguing this in IT shops, I can tell you that no matter how true it is, most people just don’t get it….